A wondrously unusual memoir about a woman who, in the midst of mourning her divorce, retreats into her shell and renegotiates her relationship to solitude, shame, and connection--from an acclaimed 5 Under 35 National Book Foundation honoree. 'We've all heard the one about waking up as a cockroach--but what if a crisis turned you into a clam?' After the dissolution of her marriage, a writer is transformed into a 'clam' via typo after her mother keeps texting her to 'clam down.' The funny if unhelpful command forces her to ask what it means to 'clam down' during crises--to retreat, hide, close up, and stay silent. Idiomatically, we are said to 'clam up' when we can't speak, and to 'come out of our shell' when we reemerge, transformed. In order to understand her path, the clam digs into examples of others who have also 'succumbed to shellfish' to embrace lives of reclusiveness and extremity. But this is a story that radiates outward from the kernel of selfhood to family, society, and
